Review: At.Tension Festival 2019

At.Tension 2019 is an arts and performance festival running from September 5th to the 8th. On the website, it is described as a "side specific(sic) biennial, interdisciplinary theater festival, curated, organized and realized by actors." 

That's the way they would put it. The way I would put it is this: At.Tension is basically a 'Fusion lite', a packing down and chilling out festival, taking place on the same site as Fusion, about two hours away from Berlin

At.Tension takes place every second year and, to anyone who's been to Fusion before, it will be very familiar scenery: almost nothing seems to have changed. Everything and I mean everything that was open at Fusion is open at At.Tension. So if you can't get enough of Fusion, then this is for you. 

All of the site's "aircraft hangars, an old runway, various circus tents, as well as various parking and open spaces ... including a swimming lake" are present and accounted for... not that I'd be skinny dipping in these temperatures, ranging from 7 to 17 degrees Celsius that night!!

Arriving there on a breezy fall weekday, it felt semi-abandoned and ramshackle despite the new layers of paint. It was calm and everybody seemed happy - a major change from the tense scrum that takes place there every summer. 

Families made up a big part of the demographic. Although decorated, the landscape was largely empty. It was kind of surreal, since it was obviously awaiting masses of people - most of which arrived as I was leaving!

The scrappy, surreal art, windblown fields and scruffy peeps made me think of some lines I wrote a few years back about Hackney, pre-gentrification, where people were also transforming such utilitarian sites into landscapes that echoed some sort of unbroken, primal landscape of the imagination:

"We were creating or own ecosystems: seething seams of passion reaching extremes as great in any jungle or savannah. It was as if all the feral, anarchic energy that had been released from the rain forests, swamps and undersea vistas vaporised by the system had had to relocate elsewhere. A place like this...

...where the concrete singularity was breaking up into earthen braids; where wires, bags antennae fused into mangled, plastic underbrush. Where horned and hooved and hooded, fur-bound creatures scavenged thru mass-produced stacks of cast offs, nestling in industrial wrecks where the thud of an electric heart kept them warm. 

In the end, my at.tension span rn to just a couple of days' stay, but only because the temperature there was below what I'd call 'tent friendly', ha. But, it was well worth being there to see Fusionista families and friends in their 'lounging around in pyjamas' chillout mode.  

Check it out if you get the chance!